Official Gramps' Memorial Eternal OT Thread

#72,582
#72,582
McDad said:
They lived with us for about 8 months after their wedding. We loved it.
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We let our son and his wife move in for about 6-7 months while they were building a house. It was ok for a month or two then the questions came up. "Mom, what's for dinner" and "did you do laundry" I knew it was going south right then.

Plus they had their 2 boxers with them that didn't get along with our dogs.
 
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#72,583
#72,583
hog88 said:
We let our son and his wife move in for about 6-7 months while they were building a house. It was ok for a month or two then the questions came up. "Mom, what's for dinner" and "did you do laundry" I knew it was going south right then.

Plus they had their 2 boxers with them that didn't get along with our dogs.
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Understood. That would be inharmonious.
 
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#72,584
#72,584
McDad said:
I don't know why this Spring is worse, but the allergies are kicking my butt. I normally just go through a couple of weeks with itchy eyes. A nuisance at worst. This year I got congestion, cough, sore throat and it's getting into my lungs a bit in addition to feeling like ive got sand in my eyes. No fever so don't think it's covid or something more serious. But my patience is running out.
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Went out on the back deck to toss out some food scraps for whatever roams the yard and it smelled like a perfume factory out there. The privet that grows wild is outdoing itself this year. It seems impossible to eradicate. One stand that I cleared a couple of years ago in the wooded area behind the house has blooms about 20 ft off the ground.
 
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#72,585
#72,585
AM64 said:
I got a notice of a purchase on my PayPal account which I haven't used in forever. I pondered it all; decided not to call anybody and deleted my credit card from PayPal. When I logged in to PayPal there was no record of the transaction, so I wondered if it was a phishing attempt to try and get me to call the seller.

I know what you mean about the CC fraud people. I had a charge on a CC a few years ago and got it zapped and the card replaced. The fraud people wanted to know if I reported it to the police ... like local cops would/could do something about a fraudulent $300 charge made somewhere else in the country.
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I have received emails about fraudulent activity on my PayPal account a number of times over the years, and I have never had a PayPal account. Your email was most likely a phishing attempt.
 
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#72,586
#72,586
AM64 said:
Went out on the back deck to toss out some food scraps for whatever roams the yard and it smelled like a perfume factory out there. The privet that grows wild is outdoing itself this year. It seems impossible to eradicate. One stand that I cleared a couple of years ago in the wooded area behind the house has blooms about 20 ft off the ground.
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64 try some crossbow, it is great for that type of stuff. Screenshot_20240503-164433_Samsung Internet.jpg
 
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#72,587
#72,587
LouderVol said:
are there supports on either side of the hole in the girder?

as long as you have 1-1/4" of wood on either side of the hole, you should be fine. but if the hole is exposed on the outside face of the girder, yeah they won't like that.

we are seeing more emphasis on that now with 2x framing. even interior, non structural walls, if there is a cut it has to have 1 1/4" of wood, or it gets a strap or some other repair metal.
Click to expand...

So a question about structural repairs. At the other house I have a detached garage, shop, shed combo. The garage is two large bays, and the shop would be like a third larger bay separated by a wall and without a large door in the front. The shed is about 8 ft wide and runs the full length behind the shop and garage. The roofline is parallel to the front of the garage. Several years ago I drove over to help my son with something and noticed the roof had a definite sag in the middle of the ridge. Then a few months later when I was back and started to drive into the garage I noticed what I call a ceiling joist was hanging down. So the first thought was see what was happening and "stop the bleeding".

Since I'm not sure about terms, I'll do the engineer thing and define them. The wood beams coming down from the ridge to the front and back walls will be the roof joists (RJ) and the ones running from the front to the back of the garage/shed will be the ceiling joists (CJ). So it turns out when the garage was rebuilt probably 25 years ago after being crushed by a big oak, the builders may have taken shortcuts. If it was up to code, the code was faulty. The ridge beam and RJs seem fine and up to the task. The problem is that the main support that runs all the way down the middle of the garage/shop (directly below the roof ridge) and the ceiling joists are pretty iffy. The center girder (probably not the right word) is built up of something like four 2x10s or 2x12s - seems adequate but simply nailed together (not adequate). There are something like 2x4s - maybe larger nailed to the center girder. The CJs are attached to the outer walls and notched to sit on the 2x4s and are toe nailed to the center girder.

So the problem is that toe nailing works fine with things under compression - like wall studs, but not with things under tension. Over the years the roof weight (and wind loading - no doors on the garage) caused the front wall to push out and pull the CJs out of the center beam. Two of them moved outward farther than the 2x4 supports and were hanging down from the center. So to stabilize the whole thing, I put a couple of jack posts under the center beam so that section was supported by those and the center post. Then I put four jacks posts above them and the /garage/shop wall and tightened them just enough to slightly load the ridge. Then I put eyebolts in four CJs and used winches to pull things back together. The center beam had pulled apart in places, so I used threaded rod and large washers and bolts to pull those back together. I tightened everything in stages a little at a time because it was winter and I didn't want to cause any brittle fractures in the roofing.

I had my son crank things a little bit a couple of times a week until it was all stable again; then I removed the two jack posts in the garage and we started parking in the garage again. This was probably 5-6 years ago. The ridge is straight, but I haven't really addressed the issue of how to properly attach the CJs to the center beam or to put any intermediate braces between the roof joists (like the cross in the letter "A"). So for you guys in the know, what's the best solution at this point? What did the builder miss other than simply using nails in the wrong axis for a tensile load and not at least using joist hangers? I'm guessing that under static load it might have worked fine, but wind loading into open garage bays transformed the roof weight into a dynamic load - unloading the roof's downward force when the wind gusted in and then allowed it all to sag back down. Enough cycles and you get failure.
 
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#72,588
#72,588
AM64 said:
So a question about structural repairs. At the other house I have a detached garage, shop, shed combo. The garage is two large bays, and the shop would be like a third larger bay separated by a wall and without a large door in the front. The shed is about 8 ft wide and runs the full length behind the shop and garage. The roofline is parallel to the front of the garage. Several years ago I drove over to help my son with something and noticed the roof had a definite sag in the middle of the ridge. Then a few months later when I was back and started to drive into the garage I noticed what I call a ceiling joist was hanging down. So the first thought was see what was happening and "stop the bleeding".

Since I'm not sure about terms, I'll do the engineer thing and define them. The wood beams coming down from the ridge to the front and back walls will be the roof joists (RJ) and the ones running from the front to the back of the garage/shed will be the ceiling joists (CJ). So it turns out when the garage was rebuilt probably 25 years ago after being crushed by a big oak, the builders may have taken shortcuts. If it was up to code, the code was faulty. The ridge beam and RJs seem fine and up to the task. The problem is that the main support that runs all the way down the middle of the garage/shop (directly below the roof ridge) and the ceiling joists are pretty iffy. The center girder (probably not the right word) is built up of something like four 2x10s or 2x12s - seems adequate but simply nailed together (not adequate). There are something like 2x4s - maybe larger nailed to the center girder. The CJs are attached to the outer walls and notched to sit on the 2x4s and are toe nailed to the center girder.

So the problem is that toe nailing works fine with things under compression - like wall studs, but not with things under tension. Over the years the roof weight (and wind loading - no doors on the garage) caused the front wall to push out and pull the CJs out of the center beam. Two of them moved outward farther than the 2x4 supports and were hanging down from the center. So to stabilize the whole thing, I put a couple of jack posts under the center beam so that section was supported by those and the center post. Then I put four jacks posts above them and the /garage/shop wall and tightened them just enough to slightly load the ridge. Then I put eyebolts in four CJs and used winches to pull things back together. The center beam had pulled apart in places, so I used threaded rod and large washers and bolts to pull those back together. I tightened everything in stages a little at a time because it was winter and I didn't want to cause any brittle fractures in the roofing.

I had my son crank things a little bit a couple of times a week until it was all stable again; then I removed the two jack posts in the garage and we started parking in the garage again. This was probably 5-6 years ago. The ridge is straight, but I haven really addressed the issue of how to properly attach the CJs to the center beam or to put any intermediate braces between the roof joists (like the cross in the letter "A"). So for you guys in the know, what's the best solution at this point? What did the builder miss other than simply using nails in the wrong axis for a tensile load and not at least using joist hangers? I'm guessing that under static load it might have worked fine, but wind loading into open garage bays transformed the roof weight into a dynamic load - unloading the roof's downward force when the wind gusted in and then allowed it all to sag back down. Enough cycles and you get failure.
Click to expand...
Am I the only one who read this and thought "Glad it's not my problem?"
I am interested in the educated responses.
 
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#72,590
#72,590
AM64 said:
So a question about structural repairs. At the other house I have a detached garage, shop, shed combo. The garage is two large bays, and the shop would be like a third larger bay separated by a wall and without a large door in the front. The shed is about 8 ft wide and runs the full length behind the shop and garage. The roofline is parallel to the front of the garage. Several years ago I drove over to help my son with something and noticed the roof had a definite sag in the middle of the ridge. Then a few months later when I was back and started to drive into the garage I noticed what I call a ceiling joist was hanging down. So the first thought was see what was happening and "stop the bleeding".

Since I'm not sure about terms, I'll do the engineer thing and define them. The wood beams coming down from the ridge to the front and back walls will be the roof joists (RJ) and the ones running from the front to the back of the garage/shed will be the ceiling joists (CJ). So it turns out when the garage was rebuilt probably 25 years ago after being crushed by a big oak, the builders may have taken shortcuts. If it was up to code, the code was faulty. The ridge beam and RJs seem fine and up to the task. The problem is that the main support that runs all the way down the middle of the garage/shop (directly below the roof ridge) and the ceiling joists are pretty iffy. The center girder (probably not the right word) is built up of something like four 2x10s or 2x12s - seems adequate but simply nailed together (not adequate). There are something like 2x4s - maybe larger nailed to the center girder. The CJs are attached to the outer walls and notched to sit on the 2x4s and are toe nailed to the center girder.

So the problem is that toe nailing works fine with things under compression - like wall studs, but not with things under tension. Over the years the roof weight (and wind loading - no doors on the garage) caused the front wall to push out and pull the CJs out of the center beam. Two of them moved outward farther than the 2x4 supports and were hanging down from the center. So to stabilize the whole thing, I put a couple of jack posts under the center beam so that section was supported by those and the center post. Then I put four jacks posts above them and the /garage/shop wall and tightened them just enough to slightly load the ridge. Then I put eyebolts in four CJs and used winches to pull things back together. The center beam had pulled apart in places, so I used threaded rod and large washers and bolts to pull those back together. I tightened everything in stages a little at a time because it was winter and I didn't want to cause any brittle fractures in the roofing.

I had my son crank things a little bit a couple of times a week until it was all stable again; then I removed the two jack posts in the garage and we started parking in the garage again. This was probably 5-6 years ago. The ridge is straight, but I haven't really addressed the issue of how to properly attach the CJs to the center beam or to put any intermediate braces between the roof joists (like the cross in the letter "A"). So for you guys in the know, what's the best solution at this point? What did the builder miss other than simply using nails in the wrong axis for a tensile load and not at least using joist hangers? I'm guessing that under static load it might have worked fine, but wind loading into open garage bays transformed the roof weight into a dynamic load - unloading the roof's downward force when the wind gusted in and then allowed it all to sag back down. Enough cycles and you get failure.
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See if you can find some thingies call hanger brackets which will support some level of loads in shear like you are describing. That is unless Marcus or Slice tell me to STFU and for you not to do that.
 
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#72,591
#72,591
AM64 said:
So a question about structural repairs. At the other house I have a detached garage, shop, shed combo. The garage is two large bays, and the shop would be like a third larger bay separated by a wall and without a large door in the front. The shed is about 8 ft wide and runs the full length behind the shop and garage. The roofline is parallel to the front of the garage. Several years ago I drove over to help my son with something and noticed the roof had a definite sag in the middle of the ridge. Then a few months later when I was back and started to drive into the garage I noticed what I call a ceiling joist was hanging down. So the first thought was see what was happening and "stop the bleeding".

Since I'm not sure about terms, I'll do the engineer thing and define them. The wood beams coming down from the ridge to the front and back walls will be the roof joists (RJ) and the ones running from the front to the back of the garage/shed will be the ceiling joists (CJ). So it turns out when the garage was rebuilt probably 25 years ago after being crushed by a big oak, the builders may have taken shortcuts. If it was up to code, the code was faulty. The ridge beam and RJs seem fine and up to the task. The problem is that the main support that runs all the way down the middle of the garage/shop (directly below the roof ridge) and the ceiling joists are pretty iffy. The center girder (probably not the right word) is built up of something like four 2x10s or 2x12s - seems adequate but simply nailed together (not adequate). There are something like 2x4s - maybe larger nailed to the center girder. The CJs are attached to the outer walls and notched to sit on the 2x4s and are toe nailed to the center girder.

So the problem is that toe nailing works fine with things under compression - like wall studs, but not with things under tension. Over the years the roof weight (and wind loading - no doors on the garage) caused the front wall to push out and pull the CJs out of the center beam. Two of them moved outward farther than the 2x4 supports and were hanging down from the center. So to stabilize the whole thing, I put a couple of jack posts under the center beam so that section was supported by those and the center post. Then I put four jacks posts above them and the /garage/shop wall and tightened them just enough to slightly load the ridge. Then I put eyebolts in four CJs and used winches to pull things back together. The center beam had pulled apart in places, so I used threaded rod and large washers and bolts to pull those back together. I tightened everything in stages a little at a time because it was winter and I didn't want to cause any brittle fractures in the roofing.

I had my son crank things a little bit a couple of times a week until it was all stable again; then I removed the two jack posts in the garage and we started parking in the garage again. This was probably 5-6 years ago. The ridge is straight, but I haven't really addressed the issue of how to properly attach the CJs to the center beam or to put any intermediate braces between the roof joists (like the cross in the letter "A"). So for you guys in the know, what's the best solution at this point? What did the builder miss other than simply using nails in the wrong axis for a tensile load and not at least using joist hangers? I'm guessing that under static load it might have worked fine, but wind loading into open garage bays transformed the roof weight into a dynamic load - unloading the roof's downward force when the wind gusted in and then allowed it all to sag back down. Enough cycles and you get failure.
Click to expand...

Thats a very detailed description. Good job. Sounds like your " RJs " or rafters pulled away from the ridge causing the ridge to sag down and the exterior wall to bulge "out" a bit. If i underrstand correctly anyway. You have everything tightened back up now though right? If so, the answer IMO is to add what should have been installed when it was originally built...which are called "collar ties". Collar ties are horizontal 2x4s that run below the ridge typically 4 to 8feet...perpendicular to the direction of the ridge beam...just like in a capital letter A as you described. They exist specifically to prevent this issue from happening...and have no other purpose. They should have been there to begin with on any "stick built" roof not constructed using prefab roof trusses. Hope this sloppy picture helps.

* Sometimes collar ties are installed on every rafter, sometimes every 3rd rafter which is every 4ft. Depends on the slope/span of the roof and load etc. Sounds like you likely dont have much slope there if these rafters are spanning garage depth plus a room on the back...I would probably put 2x4 collar ties on every rafter if possible. 3in framing nails are plenty strong enough, 2 in each end of the 2x4s is normal.
 

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#72,592
#72,592
marcusluvsvols said:
Thats a very detailed description. Good job. Sounds like your " RJs " or rafters pulled away from the ridge causing the ridge to sag down and the exterior wall to bulge "out" a bit. If i underrstand correctly anyway. You have everything tightened back up now though right? If so, the answer IMO is to add what should have been installed when it was originally built...which are called "collar ties". Collar ties are horizontal 2x4s that run below the ridge typically 4 to 8feet...perpendicular to the direction of the ridge beam...just like in a capital letter A as you described. They exist specifically to prevent this issue from happening...and have no other purpose. They should have been there to begin with on any "stick built" roof not constructed using prefab roof trusses. Hope this sloppy picture helps.

* Sometimes collar ties are installed on every rafter, sometimes every 3rd rafter which is every 4ft. Depends on the slope/span of the roof and load etc. Sounds like you likely dont have much slope there if these rafters are spanning garage depth plus a room on the back...I would probably put 2x4 collar ties on every rafter if possible. 3in framing nails are plenty strong enough, 2 in each end of the 2x4s is normal.
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The collar ties are definitely on my to do list. Other than temporarily supporting one end while attaching the other, that seems to be a fairly easy job. I also have in mind the need for brackets to tie the ceiling joists to the center beam since that is the real weak point without the collar ties. I never intended the bandaid approach to go this long, but Covid and the wife's problems after Covid have really stalled a lot of plans. "OBE" or (overcome by events) seems to be my life lately - have to admit that after a certain age that apathy tends not to help either.
 
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#72,593
#72,593
AM64 said:
The collar ties are definitely on my to do list. Other than temporarily supporting one end while attaching the other, that seems to be a fairly easy job. I also have in mind the need for brackets to tie the ceiling joists to the center beam since that is the real weak point without the collar ties. I never intended the bandaid approach to go this long, but Covid and the wife's problems after Covid have really stalled a lot of plans. "OBE" or (overcome by events) seems to be my life lately - have to admit that after a certain age that apathy tends not to help either.
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Keep your old ass off of a high ladder. We don’t break anymore when we fall from height we shatter.
 
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#72,595
#72,595
NorthDallas40 said:
Keep your old ass off of a high ladder. We don’t break anymore when we fall from height we shatter.
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Yep. Count how many 2x4s you need and get Lowes etc to deliver them...then get somebody younger to do it cheap. Low skill job. I bet a couple amigos or carpenters apprentice would love to stop by after work or on Saturday morning and make some cash for a couple hours work. You're already stretched pretty thin 64 doing the Lords work taking care of the Mrs. Hope she gets better soon bud.
 
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#72,596
#72,596
NorthDallas40 said:
Keep your old ass off of a high ladder. We don’t break anymore when we fall from height we shatter.
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Amen
@AM64 you could do it but I dont think the risk to you or your wife (considering her dependence on you) is worth it, my friend.

You're in Chattanooga, right? How about I come down in a couple weeks and help out?
 
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